A former paid “Internet troll” for Clinton speaks out: It was “nasty” an...

This comment was posted to reddit on Apr 23, 2016 at 8:27 pm and was deleted within 20 hour(s) and 9 minutes.

A former paid “Internet troll” for Clinton speaks out: It was “nasty” and “left a very bad taste”

I edited my post above to explain, but since you are the only remotely reasonable person who replied I will try to explain one of your issues further

over 170 academic economists

This sounds great, unless you know anything about academics or economics. There are about 14,600 economists in the US alone. Of the 170ish who endorsed Bernie, many are not from the US.

But what is an economist? It sounds important, but economists are NOT scientists. If 170 scientists said something will work, you can be pretty darn confident that it will. But economics is different.

All economists work with models (which is not nearly as nice as it sounds). Models use assumptions. Economists are allowed to make any assumptions they want really, even if they are wildly inaccurate or unlikely, and especially if they are "academic" economists who do not have to actually be held to account if their predictions are incorrect. So, let us look at a few of the assumptions that make Bernie's economist's models work. Before reading, note that ALL of these have to happen, in full, for things to work out the way he says. The more they fall short, the more our economy tanks.

Assumptions:

5.3% real GDP growth

This would be completely unprecedented for a developed country. Our current real GDP growth is 1.9%. China is at about 7%, but every indication is that they are faking that number to some degree and they are "developing" whereas we are fully developed (and just like puberty, once you're developed you don't grow as much). Bernie ASSUMES that somehow his polices will make this happen, based on further assumptions about how government spending stimulates the economy (again, all stretched to the furthest reaches of the imagination in his favor). Overall, there is no way this will happen.

65% workforce participation by 2026

This would be higher than it has ever been in US history. In contrast, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) expects the rate to be 57%. By 2026, a huge percentage of the population will be old or retired, which makes it exceedingly unlikely that we would ever hit his number. He ASSUMES that the only reason workforce participation is low is because of employer demand and worker training, and purposefully or accidentally ignores age and demographics.

Median income of $82,000 by 2026

Again, the CBO realistically projects it will be $53,000. This is based on wildly optimistic economic growth (see above), and no loss due to outsourcing or robots/automation in the wake of minimum wage increases. Very, very unrealistic.